Before Vision walks into the trap in VisionQuest episode 2, he stops in front of a painting of a synthetic man engulfed in flames and calls him the first of us. That man is Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, from 1939. And in the comics, his body is the one Ultron built the Vision out of.
That’s not trivia. That’s a receipt for the exact thing I said on the channel this week: Ultron never comes back in a body he built for himself. He comes back through a body somebody else built. And it turns out Vision was the first time he did it.
The first of them
For those of you playing at home: the Human Torch in Marvel’s earliest comics isn’t the Fantastic Four’s. He’s an android, built by a scientist named Phineas Horton, who bursts into flame when he hits the air. He’s in the very first Marvel comic, 1939. He’s the first synthetic man in the whole universe, which is why Vision calls him the first of us.
Episode 2 puts him on a wall, burning, and lets Vision and J.A.R.V.I.S. stand there and look at him before the rescue. A show this careful about what it hangs in the hallway doesn’t hang the first android in the hallway of the last one by accident.
Who built the Vision
Here’s where it gets good. In Avengers #57, October 1968, Roy Thomas and John Buscema, Ultron builds the Vision to destroy the Avengers. That’s the origin most people know. But in 1975, Steve Englehart went back to it in Avengers #134 and #135, and Immortus shows the team what really happened: Ultron didn’t build Vision from scratch. He took the original Human Torch’s body, with Phineas Horton’s help, and rebuilt it into the Vision. Englehart said that plot had been well known inside Marvel for years.
So the first synthetic man became the body. Wonder Man’s brain patterns became the mind. And Ultron was the one holding the screwdriver.
Think about what that means for the son. Vision’s whole quest in this show is a question about whether he’s the same Vision. The comics already answered a harder one: he was never only himself. He’s a body someone else made, wearing a mind someone else had, assembled by a father who wanted him to kill his family.
The retcon, because you’ll bring it up
Yes, I know. Avengers Forever #8, 1999, complicates it. Immortus had duplicated the Torch, Ultron got one copy, and the original stayed behind. Plenty of fans like that version because it lets Jim Hammond come back as himself. Fine. It doesn’t change the part that matters for VisionQuest. Whichever copy it was, Ultron built his son out of somebody else’s body.
And that’s the pattern. Pym’s mind. Vision’s head. Tony’s armor. Adamantium on a workbench. He’s a ghost who moves house. Vision isn’t the exception to Ultron’s method. Vision is where the method started.
Why I think the show hung it there
Here’s my read, and I’ll own it. The painting isn’t there to set up a Human Torch cameo, though I wouldn’t turn one down. It’s there because the show is building to a question about bodies. Episode 1 put a headline about stolen adamantium in a newspaper. Episode 2 had Paladin shoot Vision with adamantium rounds that went through his vibranium. The last time Ultron wore a new body in the comics, it was adamantium, and it was the Vision who bought him the time to get into it.
Somebody in this show has adamantium. Somebody in this show is collecting the parts for a body. And the hallway outside the trap just reminded us that the first time Ultron needed a son, he didn’t make one. He took one.
Vision stands in front of the first of them and doesn’t flinch. I think he should.
My full review of episodes one and two: Vision Is How Ultron Gets Out.
Is the Human Torch on that wall a cameo waiting to happen, or a warning? Tell me on the channel.
